


Working on a Dream

by likethenight



Category: Ricki and the Flash
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 18:56:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5467430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethenight/pseuds/likethenight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ricki Rendazzo thinks back over what happened all that time ago - and forward, a little, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Working on a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> This just sort of happened at me after I watched the movie the other night. I identified so hard with Ricki, and I wanted to know more than the movie gave us about what happened when she left home to chase her dream of rock n' roll stardom - but realised that actually, the movie is pretty faithful to real life, because in real life, nobody does a big recap of what happened twenty-five years ago, because everyone already knows. So I thought I'd have a go at working out what might have filled those gaps... 
> 
> Title shamelessly nicked from the legendary Bruce Springsteen.
> 
> Not US-picked, so I am definitely open to corrections on spelling and phrasing - I've picked up what I noticed, but there may well still be inadvertent Britishisms in there...

It wasn’t intentional. Ricki really didn’t _mean_ to - how did Pete put it, when it all fell apart at last? - abandon her family to chase down some ridiculous dream of fame and fortune. In an ideal world, they’d have come with her. But she just woke up one morning and realized that that dream she’d always had, that longing to stand on a stage and sing, to make records and tour the world and be as big as Bonnie Raitt, as Stevie Nicks - if she didn’t reach out and grab it _right then_ , it was going to fade into nothingness, dissolve like mist between her fingers. She’d vanish, her true self would disappear beneath the PTA mom and her whole life would become about nothing other than raising her kids. And so she kissed them all goodbye, and got on a plane to Hollywood. 

Of course, it didn’t work out quite like it had in her dreams. She worked hard, damn hard, she played show after show around Sunset Strip, she got herself signed and recorded an album, the record company and the magazines were talking about her like she was the next big thing, and then - well. And then nothing. The album didn’t sell like they’d promised her, the promotional tour they’d booked her got canceled after half a handful of dates and the record company dropped her, left her stranded in Idaho without even a ticket home. 

After that, once the sting had faded and she’d saved up enough from playing shows in shitty dive bars back in Los Angeles, facing down the shame of having been dropped, having not quite made it, having not been whatever it was that was selling records that month…after that, she’d gone back to Indiana, back to Pete and the kids. She’d tried so hard to become Linda Brummel, Suburban Mom again. But it just wouldn’t stick. Her fingers itched to pick up her guitar, her singing voice fluttered against the walls of her chest like a bird in a cage, frantic to get out. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Pete, or the children, it wasn’t that she wouldn’t die for them if it had suddenly become necessary. She just needed to be something else, something more. She’d forgotten how to be Linda, and the frame of Linda’s life was just too small for her. She needed to be Ricki, and to let the music inside her come pouring out, flickering down into her fingers on the strings of her guitar and rippling out of her mouth as she sang. In the end, she couldn’t do anything else. So she went back to LA, and she tried again, and again, and again. Fame never came knocking again, the record companies didn’t want to know, she wasn’t fashionable any more and she didn’t sound like any of the next big things they were touting. But she found the Flash, or rather, she found Greg, reeling from the loss of his family and drowning his sorrows in rock n’ roll, and then she found the other guys, Buster and Joe and Billy, and they pulled the band together.

And if they’re just the house band at some bar, so what? People come down there every weekend just to hear them play. They have fans, even if they number in the tens rather than the thousands or millions. Ricki's dream didn’t turn out how she imagined it, and she sure as hell would do a few things differently now if she got the chance, but if playing a few songs at her son’s wedding (and shaking it up a bit, hell, who knows what travesty they’d had lined up for their first dance, and Emily only took a couple turns in Josh’s arms to lose the po-faced this-is-all-out-of-my-control-what-the-hell bridezilla look off of her face, so Ricki reckons she got that one right) has gone a little way towards mending the rifts, healing the hurts that she left behind her, then what she’s always believed is true, and there’s nothing rock n’ roll can’t fix.

Also, she saw Maureen’s face, and Ricki’s pretty sure she’s not kidding herself. Just before she put the mic down and turned to take the longest walk of her life up to that stage, she’s certain that Maureen was the only one in the whole room looking at her like she believed in her. Like she just knew Ricki would come through for her kids one day, and she recognized that this was that day. And if that’s the case, then Ricki knows that she and Maureen have to sit down and talk again, before it’s time to head back out west. Time to give that relationship another chance, too. 

Actually, Ricki is seriously wondering about getting Maureen stoned. Now _that_ might just be fun, and probably a hell of a lot less likely to go south as fast as their last conversation did. Besides, who knows, Maureen might have a bit of a past under that perfect-wife-and-mother thing she’s got going on. She might’ve partaken in college, might’ve been missing it, might’ve been tempted every time she walked past the freezer. Who knows. Time to get to know her and find out. 

And hell if Ricki knows how, but somehow she’s going to figure out how to get that damn Gibson back. A guitar that good should not have to leave the hands of the musician who loves it best. Maybe rock n’ roll can’t actually fix that one, but a good few extra shifts at Total Foods might just do it. Eventually.

All in all, though, Ricki thinks, she can’t complain. Okay, she’s broke, her one and only record is a footnote in the history of rock trivia, and she’s a cashier in a grocery store - and oh man, she’s _old_ , older than she ever even imagined she could be (but still younger than Mick Jagger, so that’s actually kind of okay). But her kids maybe might possibly not hate her quite so much any more, and she may just have made a friend and ally - thank Hendrix for the forethought to put that thank you into her speech, to her kids’ second mother. Maureen deserves it, after all, even if it’s taken Ricki way too long to admit it to herself. But then - Maureen wants that life, it’s where she belongs, it’s where she’s happy. Ricki couldn’t have been happy in that frame, and now she thinks that Maureen deserves a hell of a lot of credit for stepping in there, into the frame of family and home, and picking up the broken pieces that Ricki left behind - and for piecing them together into something far more functional and happy than Ricki - or Linda - would ever have been able to. 

And of course there’s Greg. Always there, dependable, lovely Greg, without whom Ricki doesn’t quite know where she’d be. Greg, who has spent the last god knows how many years picking up the broken pieces of Ricki herself and holding them together till she could admit to herself that she didn’t quite know how to knit them back together again on her own. Greg, who pawned his goddamn 1969 Gibson SG to get her and the Flash back east to Josh’s wedding. Jesus wept. She really does have to get that guitar back.

One step - one shift at the till, one so-sincere smile - at a time. Ricki's kids are good people. Greg is amazing. Maureen is far more gracious than Ricki ever deserved. Everything is going to be just fine.


End file.
